Panzer Dragoon

Original Title: パンツァードラグーン
Romanized: Pantsaa Doraguun
Literal: Panzer Dragoon

Plot Synopsis

In a fantasy world where high technology has given way to quaint villages and fanciful airships, three good friends wander the land, hunting for their living. But one day, out of nowhere, a dragon appears, slaying one of the three and capturing the second, leaving only our hero. But the dragon has an enemy, a blue dragon in need of a new rider, and our hero is quick to oblige. The two form an uneasy alliance and set off over the vast land, in a race to a huge tower that, should the black dragon reach it, could destroy the world.

Quick Review

Rating: 0 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2003-04-02

Panzer Dragoon stands out as one of the most universally bad pieces of anime in existence. It's not even bad in a way that's interesting or amusing--just 20 thankfully short minutes of plot, characterization, and music barely suitable for a side-scrolling video game from the early '80s, filled with cheap, boring mid-'90s vintage computer animated flight sequences. The two or three characters in it are reasonably attractive, and that's absolutely it. It'd be a real challenge to take 20 minutes and produce anything watchable given this concept and primitive computer animation to work with, but it doesn't even look like the poor fools who made this tried.

Uniformly bad and boring, and one to avoid at all costs unless you want a very good tutorial in how not to make anime.

US DVD Review

None exists.

Content Guide

Nothing much unsuitable for kids, and really young ones might be entertained by the pretty colors, but probaby deserves a 10-up on account of the violence.

Violence: 2 - Some violence, but not a whole lot of blood.

Nudity: 0 - Nothing.

Sex/Mature Themes: 0 - Zip.

Language: 1 - Nothing much.

Notes and Trivia

Based on a video game series (and apparently a decent one). This is among the first anime attempts at combining cell and computer animation in the same scenes, but if you're wondering whether this is the first anime that incorporated computer animation, it's not even close. There was a very old movie (released by Streamline long, long ago) called Lensman that featured some space battle scenes done with 3D computer models. And, although there was less of it, it looked better than this does, despite being a product of the previous decade.

Actually, this mess has one saving grace, but in a stroke of appropriate irony, it comes after the credits roll; the production sketches included after the feature are accompanied by a very nice little song, but you can't exactly count that as part of the show. If you do happen to find this video in your hands, just fast-forward past the other 20 minutes of junk to get to it--it's the only thing on the whole tape that's worth watching anyway.

Availability

Released by AD Vision on subtitled and dubbed VHS, now out of print.

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